Death at the Dinner Table
I grew up sitting around a dinner table eating chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas while sipping glasses of milk and talking about death with my family. We talked about people who had died, people who were dying, and the meaning that death brought upon us. It was a running joke that we always ended our meal on this topic, but it truthfully was just a conversation that could never be concluded. Speculation about what happens after the cessation of life has sowed the seeds for the development of myths, spiritual practices, and philosophy. Mortality’s unknown elements always linger.
The absence that follows death, and its trauma, is part of my inheritance. My father lost both of his parents to cancer when he was barely an adult. Even though that was years before I was born, I still feel this loss in my bones. Their death set up the path of possibilities for my life to occur. I remember staring at their faces sitting silently in two framed pictures on my dad’s dresser like a makeshift altar, perfectly preserved in gelatin silver. I could just almost hear their voices wafting like perfume off the surface of the page. These photographs are still how I know them.
When I was in third grade my father became an Episcopal priest. Beyond the calling of spiritual guidance, a priest’s work is comparable to that of a social worker and community organizer. On weekdays, he visited community members experiencing end-of-life care, facilitated funerals, and consoled the grieving. Our dinner conversations would sometimes be disrupted by a phone call from a member of the congregation that brought death directly into the room to sit beside us. One evening we heard that a man was hit by a van when walking home from work in the dark. His children were in elementary school. I witnessed early on how swiftly the air can change in the room from a simple announcement. The reality of death smacks us on the face, a shock even though we know it is inevitable.
On Sundays, I would play hide and seek tag with other kids in the churchyard until finally, it was just my sister, brother, and me wandering around the columbarium waiting for our ride home. A labyrinth of stone walls filled with plaques containing names and dates became my playground and an extracurricular history lesson. This would become my sanctuary.
I found the names of my family among these markers. Smith. A name in which I see myself. A name I share with distant strangers and bequeathed to me by kin. Visualizing these name’s ghosts, I wondered what wisdom they would impart if only we could speak to one another. I reckoned with the thought that if they were still alive, I might not ever have been born. It was a time of speculation and imagining.
As a teenager, my family once again experienced an intense period of personal loss. After school, I sat down at our table and watched my mother cry. Her brother collapsed from a heart attack during a Bagua class in New York. Months later my father’s brother was lost at sea for three days and drowned. Then while moving into my dormitory on my first day of college we learned in the elevator that my mother’s mother, my grandmother, passed away. My dad’s sister was diagnosed with cancer and embarked on a long journey. I couldn’t attend her funeral. We also lost our cousin and then his wife, my grandfather, a family friend, and my classmate. Through all of this, I witnessed mourning by the bereaved as I also mourned.
At one point, I casually counted all the departed on my fingers at my neighbor’s house. This felt indiscreet and wrong as if I was performing a nonchalant need for sympathy. I winced in shame, losing my tally. The thing about death is that it doesn’t escape anyone. The experience of loss I just described is not unique, despite having deeply marked the course of my life. Death haunts our daily lives and arrives at unexpected moments. It is quite ordinary. Naming it makes us see it as so. The more people you know and the longer you live, the more people you know die.
I grew up sitting around a dinner table eating chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas while sipping glasses of milk and talking about death with my family. We talked about people who had died, people who were dying, and the meaning that death brought upon us. It was a running joke that we always ended our meal on this topic, but it truthfully was just a conversation that could never be concluded. Speculation about what happens after the cessation of life has sowed the seeds for the development of myths, spiritual practices, and philosophy. Mortality’s unknown elements always linger.
The absence that follows death, and its trauma, is part of my inheritance. My father lost both of his parents to cancer when he was barely an adult. Even though that was years before I was born, I still feel this loss in my bones. Their death set up the path of possibilities for my life to occur. I remember staring at their faces sitting silently in two framed pictures on my dad’s dresser like a makeshift altar, perfectly preserved in gelatin silver. I could just almost hear their voices wafting like perfume off the surface of the page. These photographs are still how I know them.
When I was in third grade my father became an Episcopal priest. Beyond the calling of spiritual guidance, a priest’s work is comparable to that of a social worker and community organizer. On weekdays, he visited community members experiencing end-of-life care, facilitated funerals, and consoled the grieving. Our dinner conversations would sometimes be disrupted by a phone call from a member of the congregation that brought death directly into the room to sit beside us. One evening we heard that a man was hit by a van when walking home from work in the dark. His children were in elementary school. I witnessed early on how swiftly the air can change in the room from a simple announcement. The reality of death smacks us on the face, a shock even though we know it is inevitable.
On Sundays, I would play hide and seek tag with other kids in the churchyard until finally, it was just my sister, brother, and me wandering around the columbarium waiting for our ride home. A labyrinth of stone walls filled with plaques containing names and dates became my playground and an extracurricular history lesson. This would become my sanctuary.
I found the names of my family among these markers. Smith. A name in which I see myself. A name I share with distant strangers and bequeathed to me by kin. Visualizing these name’s ghosts, I wondered what wisdom they would impart if only we could speak to one another. I reckoned with the thought that if they were still alive, I might not ever have been born. It was a time of speculation and imagining.
As a teenager, my family once again experienced an intense period of personal loss. After school, I sat down at our table and watched my mother cry. Her brother collapsed from a heart attack during a Bagua class in New York. Months later my father’s brother was lost at sea for three days and drowned. Then while moving into my dormitory on my first day of college we learned in the elevator that my mother’s mother, my grandmother, passed away. My dad’s sister was diagnosed with cancer and embarked on a long journey. I couldn’t attend her funeral. We also lost our cousin and then his wife, my grandfather, a family friend, and my classmate. Through all of this, I witnessed mourning by the bereaved as I also mourned.
At one point, I casually counted all the departed on my fingers at my neighbor’s house. This felt indiscreet and wrong as if I was performing a nonchalant need for sympathy. I winced in shame, losing my tally. The thing about death is that it doesn’t escape anyone. The experience of loss I just described is not unique, despite having deeply marked the course of my life. Death haunts our daily lives and arrives at unexpected moments. It is quite ordinary. Naming it makes us see it as so. The more people you know and the longer you live, the more people you know die.